'Growing our own'

Aaniiih Nakoda College Nursing Program and Phillips County Hospital Team Up to "grow our own" Registered Nurses right here locally and in our own communities. Both are excited about this partnership and believe this is a great model to help address the nursing shortages locally and regionally, but more importantly to help care for the people of our communities now and into the future by developing a collaborative partnership for registered nursing education.

Aaniiih Nakoda College, nursing faculty and nursing students along with the Phillips County Hospital and their nursing staff have teamed up to provide students with an excellent nursing clinical experience in rural/frontier Montana. Students from the newly developed nursing program at Aaniiih Nakoda College will be doing a portion of their nursing clinical rotations at Phillips County Hospital as well as at Fort Belknap IHS in medical/surgical, ER and clinic nursing.

LaVerne Parker, Nursing Program Director made the following statement: "I can't think of a better clinical experience for students than an immersion clinical in a rural community hospital. Students will have an opportunity to exercise their critical thinking skills because in a rural hospital, you are the best resource for the patient. You have to be ready for anything that walks through the door." Phillips County Hospital CEO Ward VanWichen states: "Phillips County Hospital is excited about this collaborative partnership with Aaniiih Nakoda College to be working with their nursing program, staff and students to help provide quality nursing education right here locally. It is exciting to be part of something new and creative that is really working to solve a problem and using local resources, expertise, partnerships and collaborations to do so. We both feel that this may be just the beginning of other work that we can do together moving forward."

The first cohort of nursing students will be participating in an orientation to Phillips Community Hospital on Wednesday, February 1, 2017 and then doing their clinical rotations from 2/7 through 3/15.

Aaniiih Nakoda College is in the first year of "Growing our own" Associate Degree in nursing program, accredited by the Montana Board of Nursing. Students graduating from this program will be eligible to sit for the NCLEX-RN (National Council Licensure Exam for Registered Nurses) to become Registered Nurses in the State of Montana.